How To Skyrocket Your Sales with Data and Analytics

Posted by Mark Gordon
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January 14, 2016

If you were to ask your 2 biggest competitors, “What’s your presentation closing ratio?” they wouldn’t know the answer.

If you want to train, keep and motivate a successful sales force, you have to know this!

You see, there’s only 3 different ways to get more new customers: talk to more people, close more presentations, and follow up with more leads. And only when you know the numbers, of both individual reps and the entire team, can you fix problems and improve your skills.

PP x CR = New Customers

Talking to More Prospects

You need to talk to as many qualified prospects as you can. Obviously, you need to knock as many doors as you can to accomplish this. But do you know how many doors that you’re knocking each day? Do you know how many people you’re talking to each day?

Also keep in mind that a certain percentage of prospects won’t make a decision on the door. They may have to consult with their spouse, or want to think it over, or wait for a paycheck. The people who honestly want to be followed up with are “leads”. Following up with these people—in a methodical way—is key to increasing your sales.

Closing Rate

Take the number of people that you sold to and divide that by the number of people presented to. That’s your closing rate.

Know Your Numbers

Let’s take two hypothetical door-to-door sales reps: John and Bryan.

Here are John’s numbers for the day:

Doors Knocked

154

Presentations Made

74

Sales Closed on the Doors

4

Leads Generated

9

Go-Backs/Call-backs Made

8

Sales Closed from Go-backs/Call-backs

2

Here are Bryan’s numbers for the day:

Doors Knocked

83

Presentations Made

51

Sales Closed on the Doors

11

Leads Generated

0

Go-Backs/Call-backs Made

0

Sales Closed from Go-backs/Call-backs

0

What do we make of these numbers?

John is a grinder! He knocked 154 doors and made 74 presentations on the doors. He also followed up with 8 leads through either the phone or going back to their house. He also closed 4 sales while he was out on the doors, and 2 from the go-backs and call-backs.

Bryan talked to 61% of the people on the doors he knocked. It’s safe to say that he worked much more efficiently.

How To Follow Up On The Analytics

Bryan definitely closed more deals, so he’s the more valuable sales rep. However, now that we have the analytics, we can see that he’s pretty lazy! He knocked way less doors, and he didn’t do any follow up. It’s safe to say that if you get him to work harder, he’ll close a lot more deals. And he also needs to work harder on following up with the prospects who don’t want to be closed immediately. Work ethic is the emphasis here.

On the other hand with John, you can see that the guy is driven. He knocked plenty of doors and did lots of follow up. But because he’s not closing as many, we can safely assume that he needs to work on his presentation.

Use Data To Get More Deals

When I used to run a small lawn care business, I would look to pitch people at houses that had lots of weeds and over-grown grass. There was an obvious need there. I got a lot more sales at those houses!

One of the drawbacks of door-to-door sales model is that you run into a lot of unqualified prospects. For example, for a lot services, like construction/home improvement, pest control, home security, and solar, you don’t want to talk to renters. And it’s great to avoid your company’s current customers, because you don’t have anything left to sell to them.

With the Sales Rabbit Data Grid service, you can get tons of demographic information on any potential prospect in any neighborhood. Skip the houses of unqualified prospects and save more time pitching people who can buy!

You can also analyze entire neighborhoods, to decide where to focus your efforts. Instead of guessing which ones to go to based on appearance, you can actually know the income levels, home buyer to renter ratio, age of the home, whether or not they have Internet, and so on.

Or, depending on your product or service, you can cherry pick a neighborhood for the most ideal candidates. For example, if you’re in the HVAC business, you can see when their HVAC units were last replaced, and only go to houses where there are old units. Or if you’re a Realtor, you can only go to houses where homeowners have lived there for at least 5 years (knowing that most people move every 5-7 years). If you’re expanding your territory for your food product route, you can visit homes where the woman works, they have an Internet connection, and there’s at least 2 children. The possibilities are incredible!